Bianca's spending another night in the teen dance club, watching her hot blonde best friends dancing while she talks to the bartender. Until Wesley Rush the school manwhore comes up and flat out calls her "the duff"-- designated ugly fat friend. Because, you see, guys can totally get laid by the hotter chicks if they're nice to the ugly friend, so how about it? Help me out? Bianca does what about any girl would do, i.e. chucks her drink in his face, grabs her friends, and leaves. You'd think that would be the end of it, right?
Except Bianca's not having such a good time of it right now. Her mom has been out of the house for months and dad's not doing so well alone, her crush Toby turns out to have a longtime girlfriend, and her ex-boyfriend's coming back into town to visit...with his fiancee. And when Bianca's dad gets served with divorce papers, he goes off the wagon that he's been on since Bianca was born. Naturally, the girl could use some ... distraction. And Bianca, after having a moment where she totally snaps and makes out with Wesley, figures out that having hatesex with the dude is excellent distraction. Soon Bianca's kind of keeping things to herself with her friends, and spending a lot of time over at Wesley's.
I have to say, this is the most sex I've ever seen in a YA novel EVER. And it's AMAZING. (And I say this as someone who is way bored and jaded of reading sex scenes 95% of the time.) Maybe it's because the author was a teenager when she wrote it, but this book doesn't delicately shy away from the topic like most books do or have one big sexual moment and that's it. Nope, there's hot 'n steamy nookie going on a lot... when Wesley and Bianca aren't like, just hanging out and playing games and stuff like that. Even if he calls her "duffy" frequently, he does seem to like hanging out with her. And after things really go bad at home, Wesley comes to the rescue. And that's when Bianca really freaks-- she can't be going for jerkass Wesley, right? She really needs to do something about that...
I'm not normally a person who gets the whole "hate to love" thing, but boy, does this book do it well. Bianca is a prickly character, but you understand how she feels and mostly how she acts. Wesley does a good transition from jerkass to non-jerkass deep down-- or middle down. He's a fellow who has the reputation and rolls with it...even though that affects some areas of his life. Bianca's friends are good people. I also like the musings and debates on words like "duff" and "whore" and how everyone has their "duff" moments in life and insults aren't what you think.
If there's one thing that isn't perfect to me in this book, it's possibly the handling of Bianca's dad's alcoholism. Bianca clearly doesn't know what to do about it since she wasn't around the last time Dad had a bender, and she's only heard secondhand how jerky/angry her dad got way back in the day. But it does seem to go awfully quick from "Dad's drinking" to her dad totally crossing a line into major badness-- and then a really quick resolution. I know there's only so much time you get in a novel, but while I'm happy to see the resolution, it seemed pretty damn quick for reality.
But otherwise, this is really great. Sympathetic behavior from the characters for the most part, good character evolution, good thoughts on the insult culture that we live in. Four stars.
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